


the lines where you lead me

by nuricurry



Category: Saint Seiya
Genre: Introspection, M/M, some liberties taken with character backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 01:40:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29693082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nuricurry/pseuds/nuricurry
Summary: That was something that made him different, he was told, by Bian, by Isaak. They were under the impression he came to Atlantis for Julian. They thought it was only after he learned of  Poseidon’s intentions that he agreed to stay. He felt that the assessment was far too simple. It was almost comical really, how it ignored layers of complexity. How it got everything backward and turned around.
Relationships: Poseidon/Siren Sorrento | Julian Solo/Siren Sorrento
Kudos: 5





	the lines where you lead me

He’s always been fine on his own. It suited him really; he preferred his own company to the company of others, he liked being allowed to think and work and study on his own, at his own pace, with only his own concerns as a factor. His mother didn’t understand for the longest time, would offer to set up playdates with other children, invited him to get into sports and clubs. But what he wanted was to be free of expectation and obligation. He couldn’t do that if he was to share his time and attention with others. He could not focus on his own interests while also paying attention to the needs of others. It just frustrated him and whoever he was with, so he preferred to remove the expectation altogether.

It was his brother who suggested that he pick up music, after having watched how he behaved during his own orchestral concerts. Early on, he demonstrated impeccable pitch, quick adaptability to reading sheet music, a mind for memorization and patterns. His brother played violin and he started with piano but soon progressed beyond that. By the time he was twelve, he played four instruments, though his strongest affinity was for flute. He couldn’t explain what it was exactly that he found he liked so much about it. Perhaps it was the combination of keeping track of the position of his fingers on the keys, the need to control not only his hand movement but his breathing, the tactile nature of controlling each sound individually with those actions, rather than simply following the sheet music and memorizing notes. Maybe it was because the flute was the instrument that produced the sound easiest for him to hear over time.

He began losing the hearing on the left side by the time he entered school. Already quiet, more inclined to his own interests, it was not noticed at first how he didn’t always respond as quickly to being called, how he was sensitive to some sounds but not to others. His father had him sent to doctors and specialists, he was fitted for implants and hearing aids, but he never wore them, finding the feeling irksome, the influx of noise distracting, all of it overwhelming and strange and he never responded well to matters being overwhelming or strange. So he never got the implant, never wore the hearing aid, and by the time he was fourteen, he was entirely deaf in his left ear.

The first time he saw Julian Solo was at the party his mother arranged for his thirteenth birthday. He had few friends to invite, and so his father suggested that his siblings invite guests of their own.

“So it isn’t so sad,” he heard him say to his mother privately, not noticing that he was near.

Inés invited her ballet class. Amneris invited their cousins. Cecilio invited Julian.

Whatever semblance of a birthday party had long been forgotten back during the planning stages. By the day of the party, what was arranged was one of his mother’s garden events, expected to be highlighted with his sisters and their friends playing badminton, his mother showing off her roses, and no one paying him much mind. What became the focal point of the celebration however was Inés finding Cecilio and Julian in the poolhouse when his father sent her to find them in time for lunch, and his brother arriving at the table with a hickey on his neck and his hair tousled.

In the excitement, his parents forgot about the cake, but before leaving Julian did drop off a gift for him on the table: tickets to the Austrian symphony, with a note for him to bring whoever he’d like.

He asked Cecilio to pass along an invitation to Julian. However, his brother misunderstood, and used the tickets for Julian and himself.

“At least they had a nice time,” Inés had told him, though he took little solace from it.

Julian appeared again at Amneris’ debutante.

He invited her to dance, complimented her eyes and her dress, spoke French with her, and after the arias began they disappeared, slipping away somewhere unseen for the rest of the evening. The next morning he watched from the balcony as Julian dropped her off at the front door, stepping out of his car to open the door for her and give her a kiss.

Amneris spoke of nothing else for weeks, she would disappear for hours at times, days at others, and always return with a dreamy look and a story about romantic dinners and operas and shopping trips. The relationship only lasted the summer; by the time Amneris decided to move to Paris, it seemed to have fizzled out, though clearly, they were amiable enough, given that Julian still sent her a necklace for Christmas that year, and Amneris introduced him to her friend Odette, who he dated for a few months longer than Amneris.

It seemed that by the time he was sixteen, it was his turn. Or, at least, that was what he told himself, what he willed himself to believe when Thetis appeared in his mother’s garden and told him that Poseidon wanted him to join his cause. It was only after that he found out that Poseidon was Julian. It was only after he agreed to follow him, that he learned of his role as the god’s vessel, it was only after his word was given that he found out that his loyalty was all but ensured.

That was something that made him different, he was told, by Bian, by Isaak. They were under the impression he came to Atlantis for Julian. They thought it was only after he learned of Poseidon’s intentions that he agreed to stay. He felt that the assessment was far too simple. It was almost comical really, how it ignored layers of complexity. How it got everything backward and turned around.

He remembered being a child and watching the hostage crisis on television. He remembered his father reading about it in the paper each morning. He remembered headlines of lives lost, victims named, cries for justice. He remembered bombings in Munich, the Cold War in Russia, protests for fair wages in the streets, signs emblazoned with demands, remembered hearing slurs thrown in school and on the news. He remembered hating all of it, of being disappointed, of seeing the ugliness of his fellow man and wanting to remove himself from all of it.  
He remembered the relief that came with being told that Poseidon wanted to do away with all of it.

 _Start fresh,_ was what was said, and he could see no better option.

“Why did you trust Poseidon?” Julian had asked him one time, after the sealing, after the waters receded, after they came to share the bed in his room because his nights were fraught with nightmares and dreams of drowning.

“I think I was always meant to join him,” he said, his eyes looking towards the ceiling, his face turned away from Julian’s. Afraid to look at him. Afraid to be seen.

“Why do you say that?”

So many questions. So many whys. He asked things that he didn’t know if he was ready to answer, that he didn’t know how to say easily, that didn’t have an easy reply.

He told him about his father and his fixation on specialists. He told him about the screens and the testing, the experiments for how his father could fix him, because all his father knew how to do was fix things, rather than try to understand them.

He told him about what he was certain was the first time Poseidon spoke to him, and it was before Atlantis, before Thetis, before they met at his birthday and he fell in love with him.

“What do you hear?” the doctor asked during the test, hands hovering over knobs and dials, adjusting them in little degrees based on his replies.

“Beeping, on the right side.”

“And the left?”

He spoke to them honestly, despite knowing they wouldn’t like the answer. “Waves,” he told them, “I hear the sea.”

He watched one doctor look to another before one made notes to his chart.

_Loss: severe_


End file.
